


Brighter Than Sunflowers

by Plant_Murderer



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Episode: s05e10 Vincent and the Doctor, Episode: s05e12 The Pandorica Opens, F/M, Present Tense, Romance, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plant_Murderer/pseuds/Plant_Murderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several short-ish  fics exploring what would have happened if Amy Pond had stayed with Vincent in the episode "Vincent and the Doctor".  The first chapter is Amy staying  and the chapters that follow explore different ideas about the consequences. There are 4 potential outcomes presented here, 1 per chapter  by the time it's all up.   </p><p>please note the additional tags, i will say that the suicide is the one you'd think it would be in a fic containing Van Gogh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amy's Choice

“Doctor, I think I want to stay with him,” Amy says as they enter the TARDIS.

Vincent’s face is a mask of joy and wonderment as he walks around the console, not looking down at the dials but delighting at the oranges of the TARDIS interior, the blue green that peaks out shyly in places, the pure saturated perfection of it all. They have only just left the museum, and his smile is so very wide. Amy, though she stands near The Doctor, and is talking to The Doctor, is looking at Vincent. For the first time in all of her travels with the Doctor, she has the sense that she’s seen her future. She remembers seeing her future self wave to her from the hill after saving the human race from the Silurian retaking of the planet, but even that had not felt as portentous as Vincent’s smile.

She does not love him now, but she thinks that he might be the most wonderful thing that she will ever see in her entire life, and that means something. The way that he talks about color and nature makes her want to see what he sees.

The substance of him is glorious, passionate, and shining. The hand that she reaches up to her face comes away wet. She is crying again. Like before, she doesn't know why, but she does have a guess this time.

“Amy?” The Doctor asks her, not believing his ears. “Pond, what are you on about? You can’t mean…?”

“I do, Doctor, I want to stay with Vincent. I don’t want to let him go,” she tells him, and only his hand on her arm keeps her from walking over to him then.

“But Amy, you know… you know how this ends. You know what he does,” The Doctor tells her in return, leaning closer and bringing an arm around her, comforting, “Amy, you can’t.”

“He can’t die, Doctor, not after seeing this, and you can’t make me leave him," Amy argues, turning to meet his eyes. “I hurt so much, Doctor. I am so sad, and I know why now. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’m not with who I’m supposed to be with.”

The Doctor is utterly frustrated at this. “You are right! Of course! But it’s not him! Rory! But you can’t remember. And you don’t know that he’ll live. You would be stranded, with nothing to either of your names.”

“Rory? Who? And I don’t know that you’ll live. I don’t know that I will. I might be stranded anywhere. Doctor, he looks at me and he wants me to stay and share his world, his pain, his wonder.” Amy argues back, “ I don’t know if it’ll be right with him, but it isn't here, no matter how nice you've been, and I could help him.”

“Amy, you can’t,” The Doctor tells her a last time. “You have a life and a time of your own, and we have so many more worlds to see together. Please, Pond.”

“What are the pair of you discussing so intently?” Vincent asks walking over to them. Amy smiles as he draws nearer.

“Just a change in plans,” Amy replies, reaching out to take his hand, “and an easier one to make than you’d think, seeing as I never made plans in the first place.”

She glances at The Doctor and he thinks of Rory, and that aunt of hers that he’s never met, and her mother and her father, and how many other relatives might have fallen into the crack in her wall. He thinks of lonely little Amelia Pond and her life in that big house; the psychiatrists who’d likely had more to do than convince a little girl that her imaginary friend wasn't real. He thinks of the girl dispensing kisses in a fake police outfit for money.

The Doctor feels time itself shift then, and he knows what must be done. ‘Alright, have it your way,’ he thinks.

When Amy doesn’t move to stay upon their arrival back in Vincent’s time, The Doctor wonders if perhaps she’s seen how crazy her plan is. Then Vincent turns to her.

“You are sure marriage is out of the question?” he asks. His smile is a study in fondness. His eyes are still wide and full of pride that one day his work will be valued.

“Well not if that’s how you ask!” Amy laughs taking a step towards him. “A girl should be wooed properly before she agrees to settle down!”

Vincent’s eyes widen further, his face shifting into a mask of pure happiness and shock. He reaches for her as though she is holding every one of the stars in her hands, as though all of the wonder of nature and its vibrancy are streaming forth from within her.

“Oh Amy, but never settle for me! It is the moving life of you that I so adore. Tell me that you will let me show you how much,” He says.

She takes his hand firmly and The Doctor knows that he has lost her for now. He helps her pack things that will be useful and assists her in getting a job teaching farmers' children their numbers and letters. Before he leaves he presses his head to hers and gifts her with knowledge, of French and Dutch and several things about which she should know. He resists the urge to slip in information about the general coolness of bowties. He promises to check in and assures her that she can change her mind.

“I won’t, Doctor. I’ll be with him,” She tells him.

The Doctor flies off, back into the vortex alone. There is still the matter of those cracks to be solved.  
He could go to a museum or to the TARDIS library to find out if she’s going to be happy. He could look to them to see if Amy and Vincent get married. If she really does save his life. He could. At the moment though, Vincent is more the thief who stole his friend than the troubled painter whom he admired, so he decides that it can wait. Really, with the universe spilling though cracks and whole races being displaced and vanishing into nothing, with fragments of his home, his longest and dearest love, showing up in the cracks, he finds that very few other things seem important.  
Still, he touches the ring in his pocket, and he remembers Rory. As he flies off, he wonders if Amy’s tears are dry now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first Doctor Who fic, and it's been sort of burning in my brain since I first saw the episode. It's one of my favorite episodes of the show. 
> 
> again, the next 4 chapters will show 4 potential outcomes for Vincent and Amy, and ...other people. you'll see. and i'll put a spoilery but short summary of what the outcome is in the note at the end, so if you need to know before you read it you know where to look.


	2. Outcome 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first view of what happens if Amy stays. see the note at the end for more (warnings and stuff that would spoil the chapter)

1\. The first months of Amy Pond’s new life with Vincent are both the strangest and the easiest.  
She and Vincent walk in the fields as the sun sets. They are quiet because call of the colors is so strong that words get drowned out. He loves the sight of her as the sun goes down. The orange of her hair and of the sky that tries to match it then resigns itself to contrasting shades. It settles into blues that make it glow like a halo around that face, with its mischief prone eyes and the mouth that captures him utterly. he often lingers contemplating that mouth, and the propriety of begging a kiss when he leaves her at the door the school house where she lives and works while he attempts to steal her heart.

Amy doesn’t mind the quiet during their walks. The days are full of laughing and arguing children with their endless curiosity about the wider world, a world she’s never seen but about which she knows much from the doctor’s last gift. There are times when she longs for music that hasn’t been made yet, or misses the sun on her legs, her hair in the wind as she rides roller coasters or drives with the window down. Then Vincent tells her stories. 

He tells her about his younger sister Wil, who once thrashed him soundly for reading her diary then helped him to set his nose when she broke it in the process. He talks to her about Theo, his art dealing brother whose belief in him is Vincent’s greatest treasure; was his greatest treasure before Amy Pond and the memory of a time when that faith is rewarded. 

Amy tells him stories too, about her big lonely house, and the games that she played, but those make the tears come back and Vincent cries with her sometimes, because he’s not so deaf as they seem to think that he is. He knows she thought he could end her pain. It is well that he can’t. She could no more end his. 

Amy is on her fourth month with him, and more than a little in love by then, when he is late in coming to fetch her for dinner before their evening walk.

“Vincent, are you ok?” she asks upon finding him. He is in bed and so still that she wondered if he was alive when she first approached. 

“Amy, love, don’t trouble yourself over a madman,” he slurs exhausted, “ I will not put this weight on you. I have been selfish. Go back to your doctor.” 

His voice cracks as he asks her to leave and Amy goes and comes back with tea for them both. Vincent’s pain is total and consuming. He sleeps soon after the tea is drunk and for much of the time over the course of the next days, he rises only to drink or to use the bath. Amy herself goes to work and sees friends, and she reads and writes to his sister and brother. 

Days stretch to weeks and She finds that she has a life apart from him, though she spends her nights offering him comfort, making him tea and kissing his face and soothing him as best she can before wandering back to the school room to sleep. Even at his best during those weeks he moves more slowly, and weeps and rages easily, but Amy tells him about the world where she grew up, and sometimes they weep together, as they did before. She finds herself quite in love with him indeed by the time she awakes to the smell of breakfast and the harried sound of Vincent mixing paints. After scolding herself for falling asleep at his bedside, she wanders out to his kitchen and studio. 

“My black mood has passed,” he announces, “ I think that I may attempt to paint those sunflowers you favor, Amy; a gift for the dearest nurse I’ve ever had.” 

“That’s perfect, Vincent,” she says then takes him into her arms and kisses him. 

“It’s nothing after what you’ve done,” he tells her. “Amy, you’ve been better than a wife to me and I would have you for my own if you think me worthy of you after all that you’ve seen of me. I love you, you must know it by now.” 

“Yes, you daft genius,” She tells him in return, “yes!” 

When The Doctor shows up, not long after to his mind, he finds them at the church where they fought and won, however cold the victory had felt. He finds Amy dressed in white with flowers in her hair and chatting with her sister-in-law about the role of women in the workforce. Her husband looks on adoring, though his brother teases him. 

The doctor nearly goes to tell her about Rory, the living plastic copy he found when the TARDIS had taken him off course again and he'd found River's message. Rory the Roman had found the sonic screw driver The doctor had dropped as they’d pushed him into the Pandorica and set him free. Rory had helped him save the universe, and was human again and missing Amy terribly. Surely The Doctor owes him the chance to try and make Amy remember. It is not hard for the Doctor to decide, between Vincent and Rory, which heart to break. 

Then he sees the baby in her arms. 

Then he notices that her dress isn’t white, it’s pale pink and Amy looks different than the last time he saw her, older. He has not stumbled upon their wedding. 

“Doctor!” She calls rushing over to him, “ meet Anais, my daughter! And…. Orleans! Come meet Mummy’s friend!” 

She waves a small boy over and Vincent comes with them.  
When The Doctor moves to leave, sometime later, Amy hugs him and whispers “Tell him that I am sorry. I loved him so much. Tell him I remember.” 

“Come back with me,” The Doctor whispers back. 

Amy appears to waver but then she smiles and shakes her head no. 

“Give him this.”  
She hands him an envelope and she does not know it and the doctor does not know it, but one day the lock of hair that she included with the letter, and which will be carried in a locket for most of a life, will be used with the DNA from the doctor’s companion, one Rory Williams, to make a weapon, a woman, a wonder. She just knows that her first love, as true as she knows it was, as much as she weeps for it now, is not enough to make her leave her husband,children, and friends. 

The Doctor leaves and life goes on. 

Vincent’s black moods grow darker, but he is her husband. He is her brilliant, talented, mad love and the father of her children. He is not always sober. He is not always faithful. He does love her though, for all the days of his life. 

When he dies, during the darkest night his soul can stand, or rather the one that he found was too much to bear, Amy weeps for a time, but she learned years before, that her life was more than him. She helps Anais and Orleans grieve for their father, tries to help them understand. She travels from time to time when work allows, seeing some of the world that The Doctor had let her know was out there. She works harder and longer than ever, until one day she hears what has been called the song of the universe. 

The Doctor asks her if, now that her children are grown and her husband dead, she would come with him. 

“Rory misses you still,” The doctor says, “you could be together. You could meet your daughter, they are just inside the TARDIS.” 

She comes with him this time, and she meets River Song again, and Rory, who is as old as she is, even now. 

“I won’t come with you,” she says. 

The evening is warm and Anais and Orleans are delighted to meet their younger, older, half sister who grew up with their mother in the far off future. 

“I’ll stay,” Rory says. And one day, Brian Williams will say the same, when the Doctor brings him, at last, to see the wedding of Amy Pond (Van Gogh) and Rory Williams. 

Amy outlives two husbands before she is even born, but she sees her children grow up strong and healthy. She sees her son become a doctor, taking after his aunt and step-father. Her daughter fights for women’s rights and keeps her father’s legacy alive, wring books about his life and seeing to the preservation of his memory. Anais inherits her father’s moods, but she is so much stronger, has so much more help as the times change, and her half sister finds ways to send her help from beyond their world. Amy cherishes her happiness especially, because it is so rare sometimes, because it’s so hard to hold on to, and because of River’s part in it, however small Amy’s part in River was.

When Vincent’s and her children visit her, she always seats them with their backs to the windows. The hair on both their heads is more orange than Amy’s was before it, of course, became less. It is brighter, she thinks than any color she has ever seen. Vincent, as she knew him first, and loved him, smiles in her heart at that. She hopes that he can see them now. They bring shame only to his sunflowers. They make her proud, as do the children she teaches, and the friendships that she nurtures for all of the remaining days of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "1. He still suicides, but later. Amy makes a life with their children and dies in his time " is my original concept, Rory/Amy happened in this one, later on in life , because I'm less heartless than I think I am. 
> 
> (and i'm a bit hand wavey about how the world is saved, but to clarify: the big bang 2 happened and set things back so that she remembers rory but is still with vincent in the past. rory wakes up on their (oops) wedding day and the doctor explains stuff. river was still basically river but a test-tube baby maybe incubated in a ganger amy? because in this, the point is that she makes a life and doesn't leave it for anything)
> 
> it occurs to me that how amy and vincent relate to each other/ what bits of their life i slow down and write out will shift just because rewriting the same thing would get old, so... please tune in for the next chapter, it'll be up when it's written.
> 
> I hope you liked it, and no they won't all be Amy/Rory in the end, if you were wondering.


	3. Outcome 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second view of what happens if Amy stays. see the note at the end for more (warnings and stuff that would spoil the chapter)

2.

Amy does a happy little spin, with a wave as the TARDIS vanishes from sight, but stumbles then, under the weight of the life’s worth of knowledge that now rests in her head. Vincent rushes to her side.  
“Are you well, Amy?” he asks but the words are strange and Amy realizes that he’s said them in French, and she understood, and how strange is it to be fluent in a language that she’s only heard spoken a handful of times? And how much stranger is it to recognize the accent, to hear bits of another language behind the French?

“I’m fine, Vincent. Just a bit out of sorts, walk me to the school house?” she asks in return.

“I’d be honored, and might I make you dinner tonight?” Vincent asks, smiling, “I must confess, I’m half afraid that you’ll vanish and I’ll wake to find this all a dream. I must see you to know it to be truth, and that as often as you can stand me.”

“You great big flirt, you,” Amy laughs in response, “ Of course. I haven’t any food at the school anyway, and I’d love to see your paintings again.”

“I’ll start a new one,” He vows and taking her hand leads her toward town, “Just for you.”

As they walk, Amy feels the tears on her face again, feels the strange sadness, but she shrugs it off. Vincent doesn't.

“Amy,” he says, as they come to the door of the school, “My Amy.” And it rings oddly in her ears as part of her brain interprets this as “my love” pronounced oddly, and some part of her heart knows that he means it that way regardless of the actual words.

“Amy, we will be so very happy together,” Vincent tells her, “children by the dozens, and all them fat and well loved.”

He kisses her forehead then leaves her to rest.

She lies down on the lumpy mattress near the stove. It is summer, and the warmth of the day bears down as she chooses a topic at random and tries to slowly consider every bit of new knowledge that she possesses about it. She feels off balance from the rush of it, so maybe going over it slowly will help.

In any case it is easier to think of these new things in her head than to imagine that she will never see Mel again, or her other friends; never have reunions for school or find out if Ledworth would seem more dear after the time away . She has googled for the last time, and texted, and skyped. The whole of her world is unborn and lost to her. Her parents are in that future, she thinks suddenly. Why did she never ask the doctor to take her to see them, in the time before she lost them? How had she lost them exactly? When?

She doesn’t dwell on it, because it makes her head hurt, but the fact remains, she’s just given up everything to be with a man who might still kill himself in just a few months’ time. Love can save him, she believes, someone to love him, to be there for him, and to depend on him. She really believes that, but Amelia Pond has lost too much to be blind to the possibility of losing more.

After resting for a couple of hours, she walks to town and has a coffee. She ends up talking with the woman in the café whose young son will be in Amy’s class, Helen, and they get along well. Helen is older than Amy, and she has a kind smile. Amy hopes that they will be friends, because she knows somehow that her life with Vincent will be better if it is also a life in its own right.  
_____  
When Vincent comes to get her for their dinner, Amy is at ease. She smiles as she puts her hand in his at the door, and it widens as he reaches the other up to twist a lock of her hair around his finger. Then he laughs.

“I’m sorry,” he says showing her the bit of blue paint that’s managed to stain her hair, “I though I’d gotten it all off, I was rushing though. Didn’t want to be late.”

Amy lifts his hand to her face, deliberately smudging more of the wet remnants of paint onto her cheek.

“If you’re wanting to paint me, you could just ask, “ she tells him, then starts to lead him back to his house.

Vincent, walking behind her is mesmerized by glimpses of color in her hair and on her face. He catches himself drifting into a fantasy of painting her skin, wondering how big a canvas she would allow him if he asked tonight. A cheek? a hand? The blade of her shoulder?

He can picture using that dip, just there, at the base of her neck in the front as a pallet. He could put color there then paint apples onto her cheeks, the strong trunk of the tree down that neck, down her spine, the roots curving in and tracing hidden paths beneath, between, within…

“I think I will, Amy Pond. You would be my masterwork, “ Vincent says. It is frightening how much he cares for her already, too much to rush, but the colors are screaming to him, the ones that he might paint her with and the perfect flush of her cheeks. He resolves to woo her sweetly, to win her warm heart and brave, loving spirit, but also to do so quickly.

They eat a simple meal of potatoes and soup with wine. They talk about her adventures with The Doctor and he trades her stories of his family. She returns to the school house that night.

The next day Amy rises early and teaches her first lesson. There is a sunflower in a wine bottle sitting by the door when she opens it, and it makes her smile. The bottle has pretty orange flowers painted on it, tulips, she thinks. It goes onto her desk and the children glance at it as they walk in shouting at each other to be heard over the sound of other shouts.

“QUIET!” Amy yells in english, then repeats in french. Then she says the word again in English and gestures to the class. They repeat it, half of them shaking a little in fear at the look on her face.

Then she grins at them, has them stand in a circle, and they brainstorm ideas about words it might be good to know to talk to each other in English. They learn, “Hello” and “How are you?” and “Silly head” and “ Git”.  
They are relatively young children.

Helen, her husband, and her son join Amy for dinner that night, as does Vincent, once Amy convinces Helen that he’s no danger to her son.

Days pass and then weeks, with Amy and Vincent spending their days painting and teaching apart, then coming together for meals and sometimes walks in the evenings. Eventually there comes an evening spent at Vincent’s house when, in the midst of his description of the gentleman he’d painted that day, she leans over and kisses him. He returns the gesture. It is not the first time, that was weeks ago, but this time, this evening is a first in other ways. She does not return home to the schoolhouse that night.

They are wed not long after, about two weeks after history as Amy Pond had once known it had said that Vincent died. Eight months nearly to the day after that, Anais Pond-Van Gogh is born.

Vincent’s black moods come and go during Amy’s pregnancy, with a particularly bad one sending her back to her cold bed at the schoolhouse in the last month. He weeps and howls and does not move for days. Amy waddles out to tend to him during the day, and waddles back at night though her swollen feet and sore heart ache. Helen sleeps at the school with her and is there on the night when Anais comes. She sends for the midwife and sends her husband up to fetch Vincent.

Anais Pond-Van Gogh is born in December of the year 1890. She shouts her garbled hellos to her mother and godmother, and Amy is truly, purely, ecstatically happy.

Then Helen’s husband, Marcel, comes to door. He is stopped by his wife as Amy delivers the afterbirth and the midwife sees to her, but Anais is barely two hours old when the news of her father’s suicide reaches them.

When The Doctor shows up again, Anais is four and 5/12ths years old. She has never seen the stars and there is the dark sense that the world around them is shrinking.

“Amy you have to come with me,” he says urgently, seeing her standing in the school yard, waving goodbye to her students, “We have to save the world. I need you.”

He has just appeared from nowhere in a flash of light, the vortex manipulator warm on his wrist. She freezes for a moment, pausing to think of Vincent, of the painting of the “stars” that he claimed to see.

“Anais!” Amy yells, and the little girl comes running.

“She’s coming too,” Amy tells him.

The Doctor studies her for a moment, before calming down and hugging Amy, “Of course. We’d never leave her. If we did she’d never meet her half-sister.”

“What?” Amy asks, stunned.

The doctor quickly explains that River Song was created from the combined DNA of Amy and an old friend of hers, stolen from the TARDIS med lab and having been affected by exposure to the vortex. Then He grabbed their hands and they appeared in the museum, standing in front of the Pandorica.

“Amy!” a voice shouts as she steadies herself, “You’re older.”

The man introduces himself as Rory Williams. Amy cries and Anais, confused and frightened, cries too.

“And wait, Who is this?“ he asks, kneeling down to comfort the little girl. Her hair is an even brighter red than Amy’s but a different pair of  eyes gaze sorrowfully from above small approximations of Amy’s nose and mouth.

“Ah-nah-ees” The girl pronounces slowly, shyly, glancing up to her mother.

“She’s mine,” Amy says defensively, stepping in between them.

 A Dalek shoots at them, and there is much running about, and history and the universe are dying, but the doctor comes up with a plan, and he sits in the Pandorica preparing to start the second big bang when Amy finally remembers.

“Rory, my… my boyfriend. I loved you so much,” she says in wonder.  River says that the doctor wants to speak to her. She takes Anais’s hand and listens as the doctor tells her to remember people who fell out of time.

The Pandorica flies into the exploding TARDIS and…

Amy and Anais Pond-Van Gogh wake up on the bed in Amy’s room, in her childhood home. It is her wedding day, but she can she still marry Rory? It has been years. She’s a mother now and a widow.

“Momma, Where are we?“ Anais asks in slow and careful English.

“At Mummy’s house, where she grew up, Love,” Amy replies, “Let’s go find…”

“Amy, it’s time to-” a woman in her forties opens the door. It’s Amy’s mum. “Who is this?”

“There’s a lot to explain,” Amy says grinning in stunned happiness, “Come, love, let’s go see my Da!”  
They walk past Amy’s mum and find Mr. Pond in the laundry room ironing his shirt. They have just enough time to startle him horribly before Rory calls on the phone.

“Amy, are we getting married today? Can we?”

“Rory…” Amy closes her eyes, and opens them, looking down at Anais. She is peering at her grandfather from around Amy’s legs.

“I love you, Amy. I don’t know what happened while I was dead, and you couldn’t remember me, but I do love you,” Rory pleads.

“But Rory …” she lowers her voice to a whisper, “It’s been years. I have a daughter. I married someone else. I’m a widow. That’s a whole life.”

“It’s been years for me too, Amy, and I’ve fought in wars, but do you love me? Can you? I don’t care if you loved someone else, though I’m sorry that you lost him; that you hurt. I just need you, if you’ll have me.”  
He sounds so strong to her, so sure of what this life has to hold for him, so very Rory in all of the best ways, because he loves her, and she loves him. She still does.

“I’ve got a wedding to dress for, and I need to find a dress for my new maid of honor, if you’ll have us both. Rory, she’s my baby. I need you to be able to love us both,” She replies, joyous at first though ending on a serious note.

“I will!” He yells and Amy pulls the phone from her ear but still hears him say “I promise!”  
___  
The wedding is perfect, though all of the guests are stunned when Amy’s “cousin” replaces her aunt as maid of Honor. Amy’s parents know the truth, but they are confused and help support the fiction because they couldn’t explain it if they had to. Still, they love their strangely acquired granddaughter and Anais is sitting on her grandmother’s lap murmuring to her in her accented, faltering English when Amy remembers, and the TARDIS materializes on the dance floor.

Amy P.V.G Williams, Rory Williams, and Anais go back to Provence in the TARDIS so that the ladies can say their goodbyes and make their vanishing from history as unremarkable as possible. Anais, now with the TARDIS translating, talks at lightning speed as she introduces her stepfather to her world, and The Doctor, following close behind them, can already see the family coming together. Amy thanks Helen and Marcel for all of their love and support. She plants a sunflower on Vincent’s grave and takes Anais to see her aunt and uncle.

Before they leave, Amy takes Anais to the church where Amy married Vincent, where he told them about how he saw the world, where Amy began to lose her heart to him. They lie on grass together with Rory and The Doctor and tell stories until Anais falls asleep.

Amy leans over to tell Rory, “She will always be Anais Van Gogh to me, and to herself. He is her father, even though they never met, and I won’t have her lose him a second time. Still, I am so glad that you’re so good with her. I’m glad that you’re starting to love her too.”

“It’s easy. We do have a common interest,” he smiles back, “and I know who she is. I don’t understand it, but you had a life here, and I’d never ask you to ignore it. She can be a Williams though, if she likes, or needs to be.”

They kiss and The Doctor mocks them until they all fall asleep.

The sun wakes them all the next day, and a dawn brighter than sunflowers warms them on the way back to the TARDIS.

Amelia Pond Van Gogh Williams -The Girl Who Waited-  journeys through time and space with the Last Centurion , the daughter of the greatest painter who ever lived, and her best friend -A mad man with a box. She lives a happy life, in the past, present, and futures of many worlds, most of all her own. She loves deeply, and travels by herself on earth sometimes, and teaches her daughter to be extraordinary, and to love her father, and to know how much he wanted to know and love her. She spends time getting to know her other daughter, the strange River Song who came from a stolen part of her, but who grew up thinking of her as Mum, even as she acted as her first best friend. It is a wild, confusing, happy life. Someday that life ends, as all do, but the Journey goes on, like love, forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original thought for chapter : 2. he still suicides, amy and their daughter are picked up by the doctor pre-the pandorica opens. 
> 
> (ends in amy/ rory)
> 
> I hope that you like these, i like reading them, remember that the story starts in chapter 1 and each chapter after that is a possible ending. i have no idea when the next one will be posted, i do swear though that i won't kill Vincent again.


	4. Outcome 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a third possibility for what might have happened if Amy had stayed with vincent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been ages since I've updated and I am so glad that people have enjoyed what's been here. One more outcome to go after this one and I'm going to try to have it written later this month.

3\. “Amy, you have to come with me. All of time is collapsing and only you can save it,” The doctor tells her. 

It’s been nearly a year since he left Amy with Vincent. She has a routine, now. It’s after school and her students have been walked home. Vincent is likely waiting for his supper and for his companion on their walks in the evening. For a month that had ended just two weeks before the doctor’s arrival, Amy had been spending her nights in her old bed room at the schoolhouse. She’d been sheltering from his one of his black moods, but it has passed and he can smile again, and their nights have been spent side by side, as is typical for husband and wife. 

They’ve been married since around around four months after the doctor left. Amy remembers the night when he proposed to her. It had been an ordinary night, sitting his kitchen and reading the latest letters from his brother and sister together. She’d been reading aloud as he held her left hand in his, pressing kisses to her fingers because it made her smile. As she’d finished with the letter, she realized that the hair she’d felt on her hand was not his beard but a brush. She looked down at he hand to see that he’d painted the end of a sleeve from that lovely white dress she’d seen in the store the day before on her wrist. He’d also painted a circle of bright yellow on her finger. 

She’d looked up at him and smiled at the fierce longing and hope in his eyes and said, “ Oy, Lover-boy if you’re wanting an answer I’ll need to hear the question.” 

“My Amy,” he’d laughed, but continued, “I’ve a love for you that is as powerful a madness as any that I’ve been accused of in this life. If you would but allow me the joy of your company, I would make for you a home as fine as was in my power, and our children would be loved and cared for. Pink and orange and lovely they’d be, like your smile, like your face when I kiss you. Say yes and I’ll make your life a sunset and oh my Amy when I die I will ask the powers that be to make me a star for you, and though I fear that I will bring storms to your life, above and beyond them the night will never be black.” 

She’d laughed, because stars were a shared delusion of theirs, no one believed in those pretty dreams but them. Then she’d whispered, “Ask.”

“Will you marry me?”

She had of course, and they’d begun to build a life together. If sometimes Amy stays at the schoolhouse to give herself nights away from his pain, it is because it gives her the strength to work and feed the two of them, to sooth him in the evenings. She gets every ounce of this care back when she cries sometimes without understanding why; when a slant of light or a story from Vincent’s sister about some patient that she’s caring for sets her off. He holds her and makes dinner and shows her beautiful things that he’s painted. 

“Amy!” The Doctor says and she is pulled out of her memories to face the situation at hand. 

“I won’t leave him, Doctor. He’ll die and we can’t lose him now,” Amy tells The Doctor, turning and walking towards Vincent’s home. 

“Who’s we?!?!” The Doctor calls and he follows her closely. 

“I’m pregnant.” Amy says, stopping to turn and look at him. “Just a couple of months on, but I am and he knows. I won’t take our child from him. I won’t take his wife either, and I darn sure will not leave him to die grieving us.” 

“Amy, the universe will be gone, you’ll all die,” The Doctor pleads.

“Then he’ll have to come too,” Amy replied as they reached the house. 

The Doctor runs a frustrated hand through his hair and huffs at that, “Pond, you’ve already changed history once, who knows what could happen if-” 

“You’ve just said what will happen if I stay here. Doctor, he’s coming with me or I will not go,” Amy hisses at him, “We belong together.” 

She opens the door and explains to Vincent that the Doctor needs her help and that they might be gone for a very long while. Vincent packs a bag for the two of them and Amy runs out to send a note canceling school for the next few days. 

In the midst of this, The Doctor forges a note in Vincent’s handwriting and leaves it on the table. 

The three of them set off, using the vortex manipulator as the Tardis is currently serving as the world’s heat source. They appear at Amy’s old house. On the way to the Museum, The doctor tells a tale of Rome and a centurion named Rory. He tells a story of kidnapped young Amelia used as bait for the doctor and his companion, whose mind was scanned to create the perfect trap for The Doctor. They need Amy Van Gogh to touch the Pandorica and free her younger self, who was put into the pandorica to save her life after Rory, being living plastic, was forced to harm her. They need Amy Van Gogh, who lived for years with the universe pouring through her dreams to remember and to bring back the world as it was. 

Much happens, not all of it pleasant for all of them. Rory meets the man that his fiancé married when she didn’t know that he existed. Rory, whose chief concern will always be her happiness does not rage at her when he realizes that the child he’s protected for 2,000 years will grow to be the woman who makes a life with someone else. He simply holds young Amelia until she vanishes, simply denies Vincent the chance to interact with the girl and blames it on the need for haste. 

The Doctor saves River from inside the exploding Tardis and if she looks at Vincent in a less than kind way, or if her eyes shift back and forth between Amy and Rory, well no one has time to remark on it.  
The big bang 2 happens. The Doctor tells her to remember and goes back to plant the instruction into her past like a seed, along with the memory of the Tardis. Amy and Vincent wake in her room on the morning when she was meant to marry Rory Williams. They startle Amy’s mum and explanations are quick and incomprehensible but enough that with a call to Rory, and a discussion at the park near their house, the wedding is canceled. Another wedding takes place instead and Amy’s mum and da get to see their daughter walk down the aisle to make up for having missed her first wedding in the far flung past. Amy’s family, confused but pleased with their girl for having tied the knot with such a nice fellow as Vincent, gather in the reception hall afterwards. Amy interrupts her father’s toast and brings back The Doctor. 

Rory is sitting outside the reception hall that night, unbeknownst to most inside, and The Doctor goes out to join him. He knows that this has all gone horribly for Rory and so he gifts him with one trip in the Tardis to a place of Rory’s choosing. Rory asks to be taken back to the day before the Doctor came and took Amy off for adventures and The Doctor nearly doesn’t but River wanders by and mouths “take him” before disappearing enigmatically. 

Rory leaves himself a note which includes the phrase “don’t wait, you’ll regret it”. 

Melody is conceived in the Tardis when Rory takes some mysterious advice that was written in his handwriting and tells Amy that he’s ready, and doesn’t want to wait until they get married anymore. River Song, though it breaks her heart to do it, uses technology from another time to carry her forming self to villains who raised her. 

Rory, satisfied that his first time was with his first love, goes home and takes up his job and saves lives for a living. He loves again, marries, and had children. They will never know why their father dislikes that “starry night” painting so much.

Amy and Vincent head off to see the universe with The Doctor. Eventually they learn that The Doctor had forged a suicide note from Vincent. Vincent’s legacy is intact but he can never sell another painting on earth. He paints though, spends months making the walls of a room in the Tardis into a masterpiece, and When Anaise Van Goh is brought home from hospital, she sleeps surrounded by color and her father’s love. 

Someday Anaise will meet her half sister, River Song. Someday She’ll introduce River to her younger twin sisters and her tiny brother, still new and soft, and River will love them all and be loved in return, even by Vincent, her stepfather, in time. 

On that day Amy will look at her children, all of them and turn to Vincent and whisper, “They’d glow in the dark, they’re so ginger. I think it might be catching, too. Even River looks a bit red in that lot.”  
Vincent will kiss her and laugh and their wee little boy will decide that he misses his father and cry out for him. Anaise will bring him over and the rest, including River will follow and the lot of them will settle down to hear the strangest love story ever told. 

Vincent, Anaise and one of the twins will all reach for their anti-depressants when they break for lunch but not because they are unhappy, far from it. They have all been given a chance that once Vincent would have died without; the chance to live without black moods that last for weeks and taint their joy. 

Someday, on a morning brighter than sunflowers, Vincent will rise and Amy will not. One day, he will join her and their children will mourn again and their story will end, but time is not a straight line. Somewhen, Amy Pond is looking at Vincent and seeing in him a place where she might belong, a person to belong with. Somewhen the greatest painter ever to live is falling in love with the girl who waited for a dream only to make her life into one that she could never have imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3\. Vincent lives but the doctor has him fake the suicide, he and pregnant amy travel with the doctor, pandorica happens 
> 
> i stayed on prompt this time! ( i have brief prompts that i wrote when i started this fic ages ago, and i can't always think what i meant, so i'mma go with the idea that i got it right) 
> 
> if anyone wants to suggest a final outcome, i'll take suggestions and if yours is better than the 4th one i've written, i'll write it and tell people whose idea it was.


	5. Outcome 4 (the last one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we have the last scenario for Amy's deciding to stay with Vincent that I'm going to write. This fic has gotten some love recently and I want to thank you guys for motivating me to finish it. I hope that you enjoy it. see end notes for spoiler summary.

Amy wakes up. It is a morning nearly three weeks after The Doctor left and she doesn't recognize her bed. She opens her eyes and surveys the small room where she sleeps and hears the birds chirping and feels the chill of early fall and none of it is home. 

She gets up and washes in the water she’d brought from the well the night before and puts on clothing that doesn't feel right yet. She makes her breakfast and goes about the day. Stopping to smile at a sunflower that Vincent must have tucked into the handle of the schoolhouse door, she calls her students in for their lessons. She’s gotten used to teaching, a bit. The children behave and call her Madame Pond and whisper about her dalliances with the mad painter just softly enough that she lets them be. 

In the evening she brings in water for the next day’s use then walks over to Vincent’s. He is a perfect gentleman and lovely to talk to. If he doesn’t feel right yet and isn’t her home, well… it’s been just three weeks. She hopes for more and better with time. She wants desperately to be woo’d . He is beautiful and his work is worth every ounce of fame it will bring his name in that far off future. He loves her, and she has no regrets when he kisses her, but then… she was a kissogram on and off for something like a year before The Doctor had happened by again and she’d generally liked the work. She likes kisses and adoration.  
She likes Vincent and still believes that she can love him, but when his youngest sister writes that she wants to meet Amy and could Vincent bring her along for a visit, the wheels in her mind start turning. Vincent has been saving for a visit but he can only afford passage for one and he’s been so inspired lately. He cannot leave his latest work or let the one just at the edge of his mind slip away. He cannot risk a black mood coming on as he travels and finding himself endlessly tired, sobbing, and powerless to get himself to trains on time. 

“I can go,” Amy suggests. “I’ve traveled before.”

“With your Doctor,” Vincent says, and it is heavy with awe, skepticism, and the simple making of a point. 

“I’ll come back to you, Vincent,” she says, and it’s decided. Amy will have her way because Vincent has no real right to deny her and in any case he’d rather she find her adventures in his time than summon the Doctor and leave. Wil is in the Netherlands, and more than a day’s ride by train away, but he has all faith that Amy will love his sister and come back safely. She’ll meet others of his family as well, his older sisters, Anna and Elizabeth and perhaps his one of his brothers, Cornelius, but they are not close and he will not care what they think of her in the way that he will care about Wil’s thoughts. 

“You have to promise to be here when I get back though, and write to me,” she says and he thinks that it’s silly of her. Where would he go? Still he promises. Weeks later, when he takes her to the train with a borrowed horse and cart, he stops with the station in sight. He presses his first letter into her hands. 

“Read it when you miss me, Love, and know that I would have you back at every hour if I had my way,” he says, and she kisses him, because she suddenly wants to stay, but the tickets have been bought and she does love him more than she did just weeks ago, but it’s still not enough for marriage and toddling gingers. 

He’s fresh off of one of his darker moods and she’s spent the last two weeks living without his smile. she has curled clothed on the bed at his back to sooth him as he sobbed, slept, and suffered. She couldn’t have done than without loving him a little. Some people were born with the concern and instinct needed to comfort others. (If the thought makes her eyes water she doesn’t know why, she doesn’t recall being close to one of these people.) Some people do it like breathing but that has never been Amy. She has to care for someone to want to take care of them if they're past a certain age. Vincent's smile feels so rare and new that her chest is sore at the thought of leaving him. 

She gets on the train and opens the letter.  
“Dearest Amy,  
You have taken my heart with you, I fear. As I’ve not yet won yours, I find myself without one. I shall fill the space with memories and hope to woo you better when you’ve returned. The warmth of you at my back and the joy of you at my side beat in my chest. With them, the brilliance of your hair against the blue sky, and your clever wit, your honesty ,and your courage warm my veins. You are red to me, perfect glorious red and my world will be colder while you go to charm my family.  
Come back to brighten my days,  
Your Vincent.” 

Amy’s aunt always told her she was a special kind of silly thing and Amy sees now that she was right. Who begins to fall truly in love with an artist for his words, rather than his paintings? He’d seen her, seen more of her than she’d meant to show him and he’d accepted her for what she felt. He was good and patient and loved her. She knew that, if the train could be turned around, she’d marry him for his good heart. She hoped that soon she’d want to marry him for her own, and it was a hope rooted In the knowledge that eventually he would be her husband, but with the historical date of his death looming…. Sooner would be better. 

She writes back to him, just hours later.  
“Vincent,  
I will love you. You brilliant, daft wonderful man, how could I stop myself from loving you? I need time, but I think I’ll get there. If I’m red then you are orange. Fresh and sweet, and all sunrise and lovely warmth, that’s you. Orange and Red are the same with us gingers. I don’t know if I belong yet, but I know that we do. I am here in this time for you. I mean to stay here and we’ll figure this out someday, just stay with me. Write to me.  
You’d love the view from the train. The colors blur a little with the speed, or maybe I’ve looked so long that my eyes make them blend in tiredness . I’ll try and remember the colors for you. I’ll send you as much of my heart as I can.  
I’ll be back in just 3 weeks,  
Amy.” 

She loves the time that she spends with Wil. Willemina Van Gogh is functionally a nurse and a feminist. She cares for people and she worries after her brother. Wil has his good heart but none of his depression and she is a glorious, loving, hardworking woman. She shows Amy all of the town where she and her brothers and sisters grew, all the fun and special places. She tells Amy stories of little Vincent with his soft heart and his small hard fists fighting his way to adolescence and striving against a world that could not see as he did. He’d spent much of his childhood off at school but, then as now, they exchanged regular letters. 

In a small café, in the second week of Amy’s trip she meets a man with big ears and a tired face. She catches sight of the police box that, by all rights, she should have noticed sooner. It’s parked on the side of the building and just visible through a window. This is The Doctor before they met, she realizes. 

She looks around for who might be with him but then realizes that he is here alone. Walking over to his table she stands behind his chair and says, “You traveling?”  
And of course she says it in French, because these days she has to concentrate to speak in English.  
“I am.” He says and he sounds more tired than he looks. He doesn’t turn around. “Seen it all before though, I have.”  
And The Doctor told her that once. That his friends helped him see it all new again. 

“Show it to someone else then,” Amy says. Then she laughs to herself, “I’m sure you’ve got someone waiting on you somewhere.”  
“What makes you say that?” He asks and he moves to turn around. She steps to the side  
“You’ll spoil the surprise if you look,” Amy says, and she knows how River feels now. It’s heady to know more than him for once. “Let’s call it a smart guess.”  
“She said no,” The doctor replies.  
“You run in all half-cocked and save the day an’ expect her to drop everything? Gotta make it a good offer if you expect that to work, Silly.”  
He sighs.  
He stops.  
He jumps up in sudden revelation and waves as he heads off. Amy hears the TARDIS whirring off, and she hopes he’ll be happy till he meets her. She hopes that he’s happy now. 

Amy receives a letter from Vincent that day. He thanks her for writing back and smudges paint in places to share with her the colors from his latest work and other things, he shows her the color of his plates and the table where hers should be, and her food, and herself along with it. He tells her stories of learning to paint and his awful time as an art dealer. He tells her about the brother that she did not meet on this trip and, through it all, Amy misses him more than she can put to words. 

Separated from him and yet surrounded by his family and culture, by people with his accent and his eyes, Amy falls more and more in love with him. She sees the red of his hair, his nose and ears and even some of his mannerisms but not his rapturous love of nature and art. She tries not to think of how soon those things could be lost to the world and to her. 

She spends the last week of her trip roaming the city on her own, as Wil cares for patients. She thrills at the freedom to walk where she wills and to see what she likes, though at times she wishes for Wil’s company. On the last day of her trip, she is walking past the shops. She's saying odd little goodbyes to the town in her mind when she sees the police box again.  
Surely the big eared git with the dark clothes is not back. Perhaps it’s an earlier one? 

“Nearly fooled me, Pond!” a voice calls from behind her and she turns to see her own bowtie clad, floppy haired, Doctor. He is grinning broadly, “I was thinking of you and suddenly I recalled the strange woman who spoke French in the Netherlands with a Scottish accent. You just sent me off a few minutes ago, am I right or am I –“ 

“Late,” she interrupts. “It’s been six and half days, you great gloating ninny.” 

He laughs, big and joyous, as he takes her into his arms. 

“Where’s Vincent? Is he Mr. Pond now?” he asks, glancing around. 

“Not as yet, though I intend to have him to husband soon enough, after I get back,” Amy says. “My train leaves early tomorrow.” 

The Doctor looks even more thrilled. He vibrates with excitement and Amy feels more than a little shaken by the sudden burst of enthusiasm.

“That’s brilliant! Amy, there’s someone that you need to see. I left him riding for Stonehenge and he’s… well…. he’s quite a bit of alright, he is, but he’d be just wonderful if you’d come and meet him. He’s waiting for us… will wait for us… was… well in any case, Come along!” 

“I’m not going with you,” Amy tells him, pulling away. “I chose Vincent. I choose him, Doctor over everything and everyone that I knew or could have been. I told him I’d stay.” 

“I can bring you back after,” He reminds her, “I can bring you back this morning so you can get your things and then drop you off after you left to come here. I can give you weeks that you’d not have had with him, just come with me for a few hours.” 

“Doctor,” Amy moves to argue. 

“I’ll tell you what happened to your parents,” He presses on, adding to the offer and taking advice he’d received from a stranger in a café more than a life before. “I’ll tell you what happened to your parents, your uncle, and your cousins just come with me. “ 

Amy pauses at that. She’s never had parents, it was always just her aunt, who wouldn’t go near her room. Just her aunt, who’d moved to the states just weeks after Amy’s eighteen birthday and left Amy with the house. She must have had parents but she couldn’t…. and now that she gave it thought, her aunt had always worn a wedding ring, and there had been so many rooms in that big house….  
“Fine,” Amy said. “But you’re bringing me right back here when we’re done. No side trips.”  
\--------  
The TARDIS is loud and disorienting after her time away in a world with so much less light and technology. Amy loves it, but it makes her feel tired and somewhen Vincent could be waiting at the train station for her. She stares sightlessly into the console and hopes that she won’t keep him waiting too long. 

They land near Stonehenge and there’s a Roman encampment around it and River is tapping her foot impatiently near a set of stairs leading down beneath the stones. At River’s side is a roman soldier whose face seems vaguely familiar, but Amy is quickly distracted by the structures around her. She always loved Stonehenge, and Romans. 

“Amy!” The Roman says and he moves to her as fast as if he’d teleported. “I thought I’d never see you again!” 

“We’ve never met,” Amy says , wondering if The Doctor has told some random Roman her name to try and get her to leave Vincent. 

“Of course we’ve met,” The man argues, “I’m Rory. Rory Williams. And a Roman. It’s me though, I grew up with you and Mel. You can’t have forgotten me.” 

“I’d have to have met you to forget you,” Amy tells him, pulling away. “And I’ll thank you to keep your hands to yourself, I’m going to be engaged soon, and married.” 

“To me,” Rory breathes, frustrated and defeated. “We are already engaged. I fell through a crack in time and I died a little but I’m here now. Who do you think you’re going to marry?” 

“Vincent Van Gogh, my… I suppose he’s been courting me, but not to you. You seem a nice enough Roman, Roranicus but I don’t know you.” 

River watches from behind them and wonders if they’re going to argue her out of existence. She was certain until this moment that she knew who her father was. The doctor puts a stop to the argument and they all go down and find the Pandorica. Stories are told, River is sent off in the TARDIS and dramatic pronouncements are made. The Doctor is trapped but Amy is shot and a future version of The Doctor tells Rory how to free him and save Amy. 

For two thousand years the Centurion guards the Pandorica in a world without stars and every day he thinks back to the last moments he had with Amy. 

She’d remembered him and she’d stared at him with such pain in her eyes. “You were my boyfriend. I was going to spend a life with you and I could now, but… but Vincent and I. I can’t. I don’t know.” 

For two Thousand years, he fights to come to terms with the idea that the woman he loves has fallen for someone else, someone who’ll have to suffer if Rory is to have the life that he’d planned. 

It takes him every hour of those years, but he comes to a decision. When a child who is Amy wakes the Woman who is also Amy, the older of the two looks at Rory and loves him. He is the one boy in her life that the cracks never stole or scared off. He is half of her family. Him and Mel were all she really had, the only bits of love in her life that she got to keep. Though she knows that, though she never wanted to leave her best friend, or hurt him, the thought of leaving Vincent now is unacceptable. 

She is as far from him now as she will ever be, but now he has her heart, and that’s all there is to it. 

Rory understands. He tells her something and they set off to save River and then the world. There is some dying, some fading from existence, a lot of running and soon the Doctor is seated in the Pandorica and ready to reboot the universe.

“Remember,” The Doctor tells her, “and you can bring them back.”  
\-----  
She does it. Amy remembers her mum and her dad, her uncle and cousins. She wakes up on her wedding day. She does not get married. 

The TARDIS appears in the back garden when Amy wonders about how she’ll get home to Vincent and wishes that The Doctor was there. She tells her family that she loves them, but is going to go traveling to cope with the ended engagement. She calls Rory and tells him something, and bags are packed and she is back in the TARDIS for barely 20 minutes before she finds herself on the street on the last day of her three weeks in the Netherlands meeting Vincent’s family. 

She rides the train back to him and he proposes when he meets her at the station. She says yes, they are married, and they spend the summer together at home in France. Vincent paints some of the images that he’ll be best known for and if a black mood darkens a couple of weeks in the midst of it, well… Amy tells him something, and he presses forward. They are blissfully and incandescently happy together.  
Vincent spreads rumors about a growing madness, about cutting off his ear to understand pain, and he checks himself in at hospital, as history says that he did. 

On the day when he is meant to have died by his own hand, the sun rises late and it seems for a long time that all the world will be forever lost in darkness. Winter is on the way. When The Doctor shows up in his TARDIS, the inside is glorious and shining but Amy is the only light that matters. She is a spark, glowing red as she jumps out into his arms. 

Rory had told Amy, “We’ll be friends, and together, forever.”  
Amy had told Rory, “Make your excuses, The Doctor will come get you in a week.”  
Amy had told Vincent, “We can see the universe together, and get you help for your black moods, your Depression.”  
The plan works out as it was meant to and history is, in some ways, unchanged. 

River song is the first and only daughter of Amy Pond Van Gogh and her husband Vincent. She is named Melody R. Pond , but the only water in the forest…. She is, in time, loved and known by both her parents and the uncle whose first name is her middle one, Rory. 

They live a life full of family, stopping in to see Amy’s big one, and Rory’s small one, often. Amy even checks in on Wil and Theo, though Vincent does not think that they could cope with knowing that he is still alive and living in a time machine. They have incredible adventures and see things that are beyond description. 

Eventually they settle on New Earth, in a time when all is well and will remain mostly well for the next century (The Doctor checks to be sure). Amy and Vincent adopt children, and Rory finds a love again. They conspire to raise the kindest, most loving children ever known. Amongst those children is a son, Orleans Theo Van Gogh, who surprised them all. 

Amy and Vincent have a picnic on the apple grass one day, after many years together, watching the children that they’ve birthed, raised, and fostered. 

There’s a life where she left and he lived and died as he was always meant to. There’s a life where the crack in her wall stole her along with the rest of her family and the universe ceased to exist. There is a life where a big bad wolf saw the cracks from her place in time and closed them as soon as they opened, saving a little girl topped in red and the entirety of everything besides. There are so many lives that could have been, but in this one, Vincent kisses Amy and looks out over the riches of a well lived life.  
The sun is setting all orange red. A day is ending.  
Amy leans her head on her husband’s shoulder and absently takes the hand of her best friend who is leaning on the shoulder of his wife and she knows something with all of her being.  
Her son’s hair, her daughters’ smiles, the eyes of their other sons and of their nieces and nephews, and the future; they are, each one, brighter than sunflowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4\. Amy stays and falls in love with Vincent while off on a trip to meet her potential sister-in-law, the doctor finds Rory and gets Amy to come meet him, the pandorica happens, Amy and Rory decide to be bffs forever and Amy goes home to Vincent.... until they fake his suicide and have madcap adventures and river song has a different father than she knew and in the end it's Amy/Vincent but with a happy Rory still present in her life. brief cameo with 9nth doctor is in it too. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and again, I hope you liked it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is my first Doctor Who fic, and it's been sort of burning in my brain since I first saw the episode. It's one of my favorite episodes of the show. 
> 
> again, the next 4 chapters will show 4 potential outcomes for Vincent and Amy, and ...other people. you'll see. and i'll put a spoilery but short summary of what the outcome is in the note at the end, so if you need to know before you read it you know where to look.


End file.
